Oil tankers

[Dili]

I think Giove was a Regia Marina cisterna. Same type as Nettuno

In 1942 Lucania was sunk in an humanitarian mission, as compensation the British let Lavoro get back to Italy

[LColombo]

I think Giove was a Regia Marina cisterna. Same type as Nettuno

That's right - indeed, I wrote "(note: owned by the Navy, managed by Cooperativa Garibaldi of Genoa)"

In 1942 Lucania was sunk in an humanitarian mission, as compensation the British let Lavoro get back to Italy

Thanks, I did not know about Lavoro returning to Italy during the war.

[Dili]

My mistake then i thought that there were 2 Giove. Thanks.

[LColombo]

My mistake then i thought that there were 2 Giove.

Only one Giove - whereas there was a case of homonimy that has caused some confusion, the two Prometeos (a civilian tanker that was scuttled in East Africa and a naval oiler that survived the war).

In case you did not know; Cooperativa Garibaldi, based in Genoa, was originally founded in 1918 by Giuseppe Giulietti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_ ... _unionist)), a merchant captain and trade unionist, as a shipping company in the form of a workers cooperative. During the 1920s, however, due to hostility from private ship-owners (that had links with the regime) and growing conflict between Giulietti and the Fascist regime, the former fell out of grace and Cooperativa Garibaldi was put, it seems, under partial (or total) State control. In peacetime, the Regia Marina entrusted part of its transports and tankers (such as Enrichetta, Bronte, Tripoli, Ticino, Giove, Brennero etc.) to the Cooperativa Garibaldi, so that, while not being needed for Navy service, they could be used as merchant ships (with Merchant Navy crews) to earn some money. Even in wartime some of them continued to be managed by Cooperativa Garibaldi and manned by (mostly) civilian crews; in fact some of them that were sunk (Enrichetta, Tripoli, Bronte, Ticino, etc.) are listed, for this reason, in “Navi mercantili perdute” rather than “Navi militari perdute”).

[Dili]

Thanks Lorenzo.

[Freebird]

To add some more data to this thread, here are two tables. First one is an inventory of the world tanker fleet by year, listing ships over 2,000 registered with Lloyd's as of Jan 1 each year. Note that the below table manifestly does not give us the full picture of how many tankers a given country had on hand - fluctuations inside a year (eg. 1942) aren't accounted for with an annual list, eg. some Italian tankers were impounded when Italy entered the war and were thus of no use to the Italian war effort, and as noted, the list does not take small tankers into account.

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  World Tanker Fleet 1940-1944, 2,000+ GRT ships only, registered as of January 1st.

              1940             1941             1942             1943             1944
        Number    Tons   Number    Tons   Number    Tons    Number    Tons    Number    Tons

Japan     57    574,827    59    532,947    61    544,860    62    548,787    59    503,753
Germany   33    262,981    38    326,485    40    353,276    48    414,212    55    461,742
Italy     81    432,491    80    429,094    45    242,353    34    171,383    30    171,383*
US       383  2,824,160   379  2,824,128   389  2,931,193   366  2,901,748   556  4,784,954
UK       450  3,234,852   417  2,975,688   411  2,930,844   355  2,534,899   353  2,521,751
Norway   262  2,073,771   255  2,055,254   231  1,882,687   186  1,523,062   166  1,370,174
NL       107    544,462   101    514,512    97    482,956    80    389,442    77    374,090
Panama    64    555,734    71    588,323    77    630,426    72    551,694    76    539,783
France    56    385,117    46    328,980    43    318,497    16    305,158    29    209,430
USSR      17    113,050    17    113,050    16    106,493    16    106,126    24    154,563
Sweden    21    183,206    24    205,187    28    244,061    32    282,411    32    279,528
Others   106    555,522   102    517,100   112    575,127    96    500,826    99    518,409

* looks like a typo

There was not room for the Jan 1st and Sept 1 1945 tanker fleets in my transcribed table.


The next list is a bit more dodgy. It's a list of world refining capacity as of Dec 1 1940. Some of the numbers look a little suspicious to me - why is eg. Austria included with its own entry, but Romania is not listed? Japan is alas not on the list, and finally, I suspect that refinery capacity would fluctuate more from year to year than the size of a given country's tanker fleet would. Also, note that the total comes out as 73% only.

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        World Refining Capacity, Dec. 1940

Axis/Axis-controlled        bbl/day      % world total

Austria                   10,000             0.1
Denmark                   12,220             0.2
France                   151,600             2.0
Germany                   68,800             0.9
Italy                     57,300             0.7
Netherlands               15,000             0.2
Norway                     1,200              -

Allied

Canada                   221,900             2.9
India                     37,000             0.5
Middle East              426,500             5.5
UK                       144,100             3.0
West Indies              588,500             1.9

Neutral

Latin America            321,900             3.2
US                     4,461,100            58.1
USSR                     899,700            11.7

Both tables transcribed from Robert Goralski & Russell W. Freeburg Oil & War. How the Deadly Struggle for Fuel in WWII Meant Victory or Defeat, pp338 and 340-341

very useful information, thanks!

[laracraft]

An https://goo.gl/hjc7go tanker, otherwise called an oil tanker, is a ship intended for the mass transport of oil or its items. There are two fundamental kinds of oil tankers: rough tankers and item tankers. Rough tankers move huge amounts of grungy unrefined petroleum from its purpose of extraction to refineries. For instance, moving unrefined petroleum from oil wells in Nigeria to the refineries on the bank of the United States. Item tankers, for the most part significantly littler, are intended to move refined items from refineries to focuses close devouring markets. For instance, moving fuel from refineries in Europe to shopper showcases in Nigeria and other West African countries

[South]

Good afternoon Laracraft,

Let me just throw in another name related to the smaller vessels called "item tankers".

A typical petroleum trade article will frequently reference ULCCs (Ultra Large Crude Carriers), VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers [Exxon Valdez was a VLCC]) and:

large "OBOs" - Ore - Bulk - Oil vessels.


~ Bob
eastern Virginia, USA

[gjs]

My mistake then i thought that there were 2 Giove.

Only one Giove - whereas there was a case of homonimy that has caused some confusion, the two Prometeos (a civilian tanker that was scuttled in East Africa and a naval oiler that survived the war).

...

Hello,
I wonder whether you would know where the Prometeo tanker owned by Regia Marina was based on the time of Italian Armistice (8/9/1943).
Thank you,
Greg